In Germany, during the 1930′s but before WWII, there were two divisions in the church: On one side, you had the ecumenical church that had existed for quite some time. On the other, you had the church Hitler had recently established — the Reich Church.
The Reich church appealed to the German people’s sense of patriotism that had won Hitler the election. Members simply called themselves “German Christians.” And it was through this venue that Hitler would spread his propaganda and false doctrine. Many fell into the trap, leaving the ecumenical church and joining the Reich church. They were immature in spirit and did not recognize the heretical, even evil, nature of the church of the Third Reich. They were easily swayed through their lack of knowledge and understanding of God’s Word.
Paul began chapter 3 of Corinthians by, quite surprisingly, stating, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.” (1 Cor. 3:1-2) What Paul is saying is that the people of the church of Corinth are not spiritually mature. He could not feed them solid food, but milk. They had still not fully learned the basic principals of Christianity, as demonstrated through their behavior.
How do we distinguish the mature from the immature? Hebrews 10:11-14 says, “We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”
It was clearly demonstrated through the jealousy and quarrelling in the church of Corinth, Paul explained, that they were still worldly. (1 Cor. 3:3) It was also demonstrated through the divisions in the church (“one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’” 1 Cor. 3:4.)
They quarrelled about leaders while forgetting the most important of all: Jesus Christ. “What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.” (1 Cor. 3:5) We must not focus on our differences, but on what we have in common through Jesus. Even today people will argue over pastors, ministers and theologians forgetting that they are servants of the Lord, just as we are called to be. “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.” (1 Cor. 3:7) “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 3:11)
Paul then gets into an interesting discussion about the work we do here on earth (in obedience to God.) Paul says that we will be rewarded according to our labor — whether we’re planting or watering. (1 Cor. 3:8) And that we have an option: Are we going to build upon the foundation of the Lord with gold, silver and precious stones, or are we going to build with wood, hay and straw? (1 Cor. 3:12).
In other words, we can choose to do good work for the Lord, or not. But remember, glory being brought to God is not reliant upon what we do, glory will always come to Him. The difference is whether we live a life with meaning in glorifying God. After all, “his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.” (1 Cor. 3:13-15)
Wait, what did that say? If you do your work well for the Lord, you will be rewarded. If not, you won’t loose your salvation or anything, but you’ll be sliding in by the seat of your pants. We are called to build for the Lord, let’s build well.
Then, almost as if Paul remembered a random side note, he said, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” (1 Cor. 3:16-17) As the Bible says several times, and I will say until I’m blue in the face, all human life is sacred. You are a temple of the Lord. You are set apart. This truth seems to get more and more fuzzy as time goes on. People for years have been violating their own temple, through suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, and inflicting self harm; as well as violating other temples of the Lord through abortion, murder, genocide and more. We cannot let our hearts grow callous to violations of human life, lest it become normal as was the case in Nazi Germany against the Jews and those disabled and with special needs.
“Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a ‘fool’ so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’; and again, ‘The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.’ So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
Let us not focus on the things of this world, but the things of God. We have a important message that nothing is stopping us from telling. We have work to do and do well. And we can always grow in Christ by studying his word to learn how to distinguish good from evil.
The division in the churches of Germany was dangerous because the immature were deceived. We must protect our churches from falsehood and remember our truth, strength and salvation is in Christ alone.
-Ben
Devotional: 1 Corinthians 3
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